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Aide to Iran's Ahmadinejad arrested as boss gives U.N. speech

September 26, 2012 | 12:51
pm

TEHRAN -- Iranian
authorities arrested and jailed a top press advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on
Wednesday, the culmination of a legal saga that began last year when the aide was convicted
of publishing an "offensive" magazine article on how Iranian women should dress.

Ali
Akbar Javanfekr, who also headed IRAN Magazine, was banned last year from working in
journalism for three years after his publication ran an article
exploring the history of Islamic dress, which was critical of women being compelled to wear a head scarf. The piece was deemed contrary
to "Islamic principles," leading to charges against Javanfekr for publishing material "offensive to Islamic codes and public
morality."

Javanfekr also served as managing editor of the official
Islamic Republic News Agency. His conviction last year was seen as an escalation of the feud between Ahmadinejad and
other Iranian conservatives, who accuse the president of undermining Islamic
values and trying to marginalize clerics.

The
arrest was carried out Wednesday while Ahmadinejad was delivering a speech
before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the official news
agency reported. Javanfekr was taken to Evin Prison in Tehran to serve his
sentence, it said.

His attorney, Ghahreman Shojaeiat, said Javanfekr was given a six-month sentence for the magazine article and a second sentence of one year on a charge of insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's website, which meant he would serve the longer sentence.

Though
Javanfekr was convicted and sentenced last year, he had appealed his case. An appeals court upheld the charges against him in February. It was not
immediately clear Wednesday why he wasn't jailed at the time
that his appeal was denied.

Iranian authorities also shut down a reformist daily newspaper over a caricature of soldiers blindfolding one another, seen by war veterans as an insult. Fars News Agency reported that 120 Iranian lawmakers called for a ban of the Shargh daily after the caricature ran Tuesday.